Brother
by Am I the Protagonist
Summary: The boys finish what seems to be a normal hunt, that is, until they learn that dealing with witches can have some serious side effects and are forced to hunt down the one remaining member of the coven. Not a slash fic. Dual Perspective. Moderately humorous. Violent. Set season 5, between "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" and "Dark Side of the Moon".


At this point Dean would've preferred demons. At least they were pretty easy to figure out. But no, out of every freak-of-nature they could've been dealing with it had to be witches. And those assholes just loved messing with him.

If he could breathe at the moment he probably, scratch that, definitely would've been cursing the bitch out. Behind him Sam searched the car desperately, throwing gun after gun from the trunk in what seemed like an endless stream of weapons. All that his efforts brought though was an aggravated mumble under his breath as he near about sprinted to the front to look under the hood.

Dean sat paralyzed behind the steering wheel hand still on the ignition. All that he could move was his eyes, and past his brother he could just see the fading outline of the little silver Porsche the bitch had driven away in. He tried again to move, to even blink, but it was impossible. It only made the pain in his chest worse. " _Come on Sam,"_ he thought. His throat and lungs were slowly filling with blood. He winced internally as he felt a fresh wound carve itself into his side. " _Hurry up!"_ He had a couple minutes left at best.

Sam's head shot up in front of him, "Got it! I got it!" He pulled up a hex-bag and lit it on fire. As the brown package went up in smoke Dean was finally able to move his joints. He cracked his knuckles and popped his neck as he opened the car door, pulling up his shirt to look for remaining wounds, luckily it seemed they'd disappeared along with the blood that had been clogging his airway.

"Hey, thanks for taking your sweet time," he joked. Sam just shook his head, turning around to look down the road with a smirk on his face. "Hey, how about the next time you see a witch in your car you don't jump right in." "Point taken," Dean walked over to the hood of the car, "What was in it?" Sam leaned over, looking at the ashes of the hex-bag, he still mostly guarded Dean's view of the actual engine, and the older Winchester began to feel like that was intentional.

"Just you average hex-bag, some bones, some poor animal's heart, a couple other things I didn't recognize." Sam trailed off, almost as if he hoped Dean wouldn't keep prodding him.

"What?" Dean ignored the obvious signs his brother was putting and asked his question anyway.

"What!" The longhaired hunter responded, a little too quickly.

"Dude."

Sam sighed, moving out of the way, Baby's engine looked like crap. Everything from the gasket cap to the radiator had been keyed, unscrewed or damaged in some way or another. It was a miracle she could still run.

Dean could feel a vile taste in his mouth as he hunched over. It was one thing to mess with him, messing with his car on the other hand, that was a death wish.

•••

Sam stepped back when Dean saw what had happened to the Impala. He'd grown up with him, so he knew that when someone screwed with Dean's baby, it was best to be out of swinging distance.

As his brother hunched over he moved closer trying to comfort him. "Hey, hey..."

But before he could say anything else Dean exploded.

"SON OF A BITCH!" He yelled, kicking the dirt. Sam watched as he pulled out his pearl handled gun and cocked it, making a move for the car door, his face set in determination.

Sam decided that now would be a good time to step in.

"Hey, Dean, hey, hey, hey. What're you doing?"

"Move Sam, we're ganking the bitch." His face was calm, but his eyes have away how pissed he was.

"Dean, there's no way we'll catch up to her, we already got the rest of the coven, Bobby said-"

"I don't give a damn what Bobby said, we're ganking her ass now."

He tried to move around his brother, only getting more agitated when his path was blocked.

"Dean."

"Sam, she hurt baby. Nobody hurts baby! Get in the car."

"Dean." Sam grabbed his brother by the shoulders. "She's gone Dean. We run into her again, trust me; I'll help you pull her guts out. But she's off the radar, there's no way we'll find her tonight. There's a motel we passed a while back, and we can drive back to Bobby's in the morning so that you can fix her."

Dean looked flustered but he was considering it. It would be their first real break in over a month. "Where are we. Where are we?!" he finally asked, hands flying in the air as he began to back off.

"Philly, I think."

 _"_ Fine," Dean said. "We need to get stitched up anyway."

Sam winced as he ran his fingers over the back of his head. Of course their initial ambush of the coven hadn't exactly gone according to plan. They'd been hit over the head with some sort of bottle when they'd first entered. One of the hags had tried to mutter some Latin incantation over them, luckily he'd been able to stick her with the demon knife before she'd finished. However, he and Dean would now probably have matching scars at the bases of their skulls.

As they made their way to the motel his mind kept going back to what she'd been saying. He was normally pretty good with Latin, but she'd been talking fast and he'd just been hit in the back of the head. So, he'd really only been able to translate one word. "Sleep". Which while they hadn't done that in about 48 hours, seemed like a pretty strange attack, normally witches aimed to kill. Anyway, she hadn't finished her spell. And sleep was exactly what they needed.

At that moment his phone rang, Dean looked over at him pointedly as they pulled into the parking lot. It was Bobby. "You boys are in Philly right?"

"Yeah," Sam replied, rubbing his eyes. He looked through the window as Dean paid for the room. "I just got wind of another case there, think you boys can look into it in the morning?"

"Yeah, sure Bobby." So much for a break. "Could you call back in the morning with the details?"

Sam hung up the phone, as Dean came back to the car. He gave him the news as they opened the door to their room.

"Awesome," Dean gave him his normal shit-eating grin and walked over to the closest bed. "I don't know about you but a couple hours sound good to me. We'll patch ourselves up in the morning."

"Hey, maybe it'd be better to-" Dean was out before Sam could respond. Obviously, near-death experiences had become too common to mess with his head. But as he got into his own bed, Sam couldn't help but notice how strange he felt, almost as if he wasn't all there. He gripped the knife under his pillow a little tighter and slipped into unconsciousness.

•••

 _Dean was laying on his motel bed. An invisible force held him down tight on top of the covers and though he put all his strength into breaking free, it was if he were cemented to the sheets. The witch from earlier sat across the room, picking at her fingernails as she watched him struggle. If she wanted them dead, it would have been easy enough to do it in their sleep. So what was she planning? Torture probably, at least that was familiar. Sam was a couple feet away, his condition no better. And then that blonde bitch walked up behind him, stroking his cheek. Seriously?! Why did the evil chicks always want to get physical? Well, he couldn't blame them, but come on, if she was gonna rip out his guts she could at least be professional about it. But instead she grabbed the back of his head, literally ripping him out of his own body._

Dean's eyes flew open in the hotel room, he was breathing heavily, it had only been a dream. He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear his head. He'd gotten maybe a couple hours at most, the sun wasn't up yet, which was normal for him. What wasn't normal was how hot his head was. It felt like he had fallen asleep with a heat pack on. He knew he wasn't sick, Winchester's don't get sick, at least not normal sick. Maybe it was just some after effects from the witch's Latin mumbo jumbo.

He looked over to his left, the lump in the other bed telling him that the younger Winchester was still asleep. Dean figured he'd give him a little while longer, his brother had looked like he was about to pass out when they'd got into the room last night.

He stumbled out of bed, ramming his leg into a table as he walked by. _Shit._ Something was off, but he couldn't place his finger on it. His nightmares hadn't really helped. As he turned on the shower Dean tried to shake the images from his mind.

That crazy bitch was gone, all that was left was his massive headache. His head was still incredibly hot, like it was covered with a beanie or something, but he figured he'd just pop some aspirin after his shower. They'd probably be getting a call from Bobby soon anyway. Dean closed the medicine cabinet and froze. Even in the dim lighting of the crappy motel bathroom he could see what was wrong.

The older hunter reached silently towards his reflection, before looking down and back up. Sammy's face looked back at him. Dean whirled around to look at the sleeping figure in the other bed. The bed he'd fallen asleep in.

He reached up to touch his own head only to find Sam's long locks running through his fingers. Dean leaned in towards the mirror again before he finally lost it, yelling out, "SAM!" "SAM!"

•••

Everything was fine until he heard himself screaming. Sam shot up, pointing the gun under his pillow at the man in front of him. _Wait, gun? Where was his knife?_ He inspected the weapon in his hand while keeping it trained on the intruder. _It was Dean's gun. Why the hell did he have Dean's gun?_ The man in the bathroom turned around, revealing to Sam his own face. He froze in shock as he heard his voice say, "Uh, yeah Sammy, I think we have a problem."

Instinctively, Sam's hand went to his hair only to find it short and sculpted. His voice faltered as he heard himself speak in his older brother's tones. "D-Dean?" Ignoring all of his better instincts, Sam dropped the gun on the bed and ran into the bathroom.

The mirror told the whole story. Both of them were there alright. They just didn't have the right bodies.

His older brother put it into words as Sam heard himse-Dean exclaim, touching his face, "Son of a bitch." He looked back at his own reflection, the one that looked like his older brother. They were in some deep shit.


End file.
